Two years after this post, blankets got sleeves.
Teens will carry little hammers and use them to hit themselves in the head, which will drive their parents absolutely bonkers. At first it will be some kind or another of real hammer, just small. But then cynical merchants will start selling ornate hammers just for this purpose (some might in fact look like the marijuana pipes in head shops). It will be just insufferably cool to walk around with one of these little ornate hammers poking insolently out of the back jeans pockets. And the hammers will be overpriced, all the better to infuriate parents, who will shout “you’re hitting yourself in the head with a hammer, and you’re paying good money to do it!”
What surprises me about this post is how little of it has come to pass. The only fashion trends I have seen recently are tattoos and shaped jackets (which I think look awful). Obviously, things have gone much more casual during the pandemic and that might not change.
Oh, beards. When I first grew one, 58 years ago, I damn near caused accidents walking down the streets of my wife’s hometown (pop. 8000, then). Nowadays so many testicled humans have beards, you hardly notice them.
It won’t be long, women will join men, going shirtless in the summer. Maybe some Jeans or Jean shorts walking everywhere on the streets without a shirt. Bicycling to the corner store, men or women, nipples free. Why are man nipples non-sexus? It’s so hot, to work with a shirt, in summer. IT’s no different for a woman who is expected to wear two garments, binding her chest. It’s pretty old. Unbound and nonsexualized chest is common in many cultures, in even now Africa, Asia, Pan Pacific, South America. To sexualize mammaries is an uncommon, Western kink.
Nah - it’s always contextual - bare breasts are only an unmarried thing in the South African Bantu cultures where traditionally young women go topless, for instance. Married women cover those puppies up. Why the difference, if not some degree of sexualization going on?
And medieval Japan and China were hardly free-the-nipple territories. Lots of covering-up happening there, outside of bathing and erotic art.
I would argue there is a unisex, beyond unisex, temperol and geographic. In ancient times, in temperate Climes there 9only concern for genital, cxover up and exclusion. Bet womankind has spent less time covering her food source, than her bleeding, life creating force.
It’s a slow evolution, that started with Bra Burning, and topless beacjes, and laws. Leaps and bounds in breastfeeding. The current “Free the Nipple” campaign. Suffrage is long.
An alternative view: solar radiation will become the fashionable health concern. Wide-brim hats and concealing clothes become cool (and with modern fabrics may be literally cooler). Natural skin tones will be favored, while tans and freckles will be viewed as the hedonistic excesses of old people.
This thread is old enough that the baggy pants the OP was complaining about have gone away and tight pants are back in fashion.
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People are preferring loose, informal clothing after Covid.
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People are generally becoming bigger.
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People are embracing different cultures, and designers have long looked to these for inspiration.
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People love “The Simpsons” and blankets with sleeves.
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Colourful patterns allow self expression.
Muumuus. In the future, people will be famous for having fifteen muumuus.